Workplace Remains Sex-Segregated, Panel Concludes

Although employment options widened substantially for women in the
1970's, the workplace--including schools--remains predominantly
sex-segregated, and that segregation continues to depress women's wages
and opportunities for advancement relative to men's.

That is the conclusion of a two-year study conducted by a committee
of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of
Sciences. The committee received approximately $180,000 from the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, the U.S. Education Department, and
the U.S. Labor Department to conduct its research.

The Committee on Women's Employment and Related Social Issues was
chaired by Alice S. Ilchman, president of Sarah Lawrence College.

The group's study found that more than half of all Americans work in
jobs that are 80 percent male or female, and that women earn 60 cents
for every dollar earned by men. "Approximately 35-40 percent of the
wage gap can be attributed to occupational segregation," the report
4states, "and sex segregation within occupations apparently accounts
for much of the remaining disparity."

In elementary-school teaching, a field cited by the committee as an
example of segregation among occupations, women made up 75.4 percent of
the teaching force in 1980, compared with 83.9 percent in 1970. But
only 28 percent of public-school administrators are women, according to
estimates by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Within occupations, the committee said, although affirmative-action
programs have increased the number of women in predominantly male
professions, "decreases in federal enforcement that have occurred since
1981 and recent changes in the philosophy of enforcement, including
reversals of federal civil-rights policy in some areas, are likely to
negatively affect women's future employment opportunities."

Further, the committee noted, despite gains made in the 1970's--when
the index of sex segregation declined by 10 percent, the largest
decrease in any decade--the index will decline only 2 to 8 percent in
the 1980's. That index measures the degree to which the distributions
of women and men across the occupations differ from each other.

To reduce the economic consequences of such segregation, the
committee called on employers to end discriminatory practices
voluntarily. It recommended that the federal government enforce
anti-discrimination laws firmly, promote affirmative-action programs,
and increase its monitoring of schools' compliance with sex-equity laws
such as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

The committee called on schools to remove sexual stereotyping from
teaching materials and occupational information for students and to
develop programs heightening awareness of the economic consequences of
sex segregation.

Barriers to Equality

The most important causes of sexual segregation in the workforce are
hiring and training practices, social stereotyping, and other barriers
to equality of employment, rather than the job choices men and women
make, according to the report.

While equal employment opportunity does not necessarily require that
equal proportions of men and women fill all jobs, the study concluded,
the extent of segregation would be "substantially reduced" if barriers
to equality were removed.

Such barriers, the committee noted, include recruitment systems that
depend on referrals from predominantly male settings such as vocational
education or the military, requirements for nonessential training or
credentials that women often lack, and departmental rather than
plant-wide seniority systems that limit women's career progress.

Although it noted that the evidence is scanty, the committee also
suggested that practices in education may perpetuate sex-role
stereotypes, and it pointed to sex segregation in many vocational
programs as a key problem.

Lower Wages

Sex segregation, the panel also noted, plays a "particularly
important" role in depressing wages in female-dominated
occupations.

The economic effects of lower wages for women, the panel found, are
likely to increase due to the growing number of women in the workforce
(currently 43 percent) and the increasing impact of women's wages on
family income. In 1984, the committee noted, single women headed
one-sixth of all American families, and married women contributed 69
percent of the income of families earning less than $10,000.

Further, the committee noted, the economic effects of employment
segregation continue after women leave the workforce, in the form of
lower benefits from Social Security and other retirement programs.

Sex segregation in employment, it found, also reduces national
productivity by failing to make full use of the available labor supply.
"Society as well as individual members lose when workers are assigned
to jobs on the basis of their gender rather than their talents," the
report said.

Additional Findings

Other findings of the report:

In 1981, the median salary for women who worked full time throughout
the year was $12,001, about 59 percent of the median male salary of
$20,260. White women over age 18 earned about 60 percent of the salary
of white men; black women earned 76 percent of the salary of black men;
and Hispanic women earned 73 percent of the salary of Hispanic men.
Black women earned 54 percent of the wages of white men.

Among the 10 occupations employing the most women in 1980,
bookkeeping, registered nursing, and secretarial work were the most
segregated by sex. The most male-dominated occupations among the 10
fields employing the most men were auto repair, truck driving, and
carpentry.

Beliefs and practices concerning family care contribute to
segregation in the workplace, although their impact is difficult to
quantify, the committee said. Society continues to believe that women
have primary responsibility for child care. But because half of all
mothers of preschool children and more than half of all mothers of
school-age children are in the labor force, child-care facilities must
be made available, affordable, and adaptable to both parents' work, the
report says.

Copies of the 173-page report, entitled "Women's Work, Men's Work:
Sex Segregation on the Job," are available for $15.50 from the National
Academy Press, 2010 Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
20418.

Vol. 05, Issue 17

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